Andrew Gillum pledges to ‘stay high,’ avoid Ron DeSantis’ ‘gutter’ politics

Andrew Gillum

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum pledged Wednesday to “stay high” in the race against Ron DeSantis, and avoid the Republican’s “gutter politics.”

Appearing on Shepard Smith‘s show on Fox News, Gillum was asked to address DeSantis’ contention Wednesdau on the same network that voting in Gillum would “monkey this up” — “this” being the state’s performance economically during the Rick Scott era.

Florida voters, Gillum said, are “sick of” that kind of coded appeal.

“In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls. They’re now using bullhorns,” Gillum said.

“We’ve got to make sure we stay focused on the issues that affect every day people,” Gillum said. “I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump. There’s enough of that going on.”

“I’m going to try and stay high, try to talk about what the … future is for the state of Florida,” Gillum said. “I think that’s what people want. They’re just so sick of this divisive, derisive politics that’s come out of Washington, and has now infiltrated the politics of this state.”

“Ron DeSantis, he’s very clear on day one that he’s willing to go down to the gutter, and in our opinion, we’re going to win this race because we’re going to stay high,” Gillum said, and “remind Floridians of what the true spirit of the American Way is.”

A DeSantis spox noted that the Republican “was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses.”

Whether that’s obvious to DeSantis or not, it’s more opaque to many on the left and in the center, who were reminded of former Sen. George Allen‘s reference to a campaign trail tracker as a “macaca” in 2006.

Allen lost his re-election in a “blue wave” year, and those comments at an August stop arguably sealed his fate.

Even the DeSantis-friendly Fox News distanced itself from the Republican’s comments, saying the network does not “condone” his language.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


2 comments

  • Frankie M.

    August 29, 2018 at 3:52 pm

    God I hated McCain but man do I miss him.

  • Christopher M. Kennard

    August 30, 2018 at 1:48 pm

    Compare the approach between DeSantis and Gillum . . . one reflects divisive hate and “ugliness” of the political gutter . . . the other with an enlightened view and vision for the future. Thank you, Mr. Gillum, for your understanding and willingness to face confrontation, racial hatred and pure evil at times, with patience, love and the desire to make this state and country the best for all of us . . . not just the few.

    Trump styled candidate for Florida Governor Ron Desantis warns Florida voters not to elect an “articulate” Black man and twice-elected Mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum, so we don’t “monkey” up the administration our state . . . that we need someone like Trump, or himself [Ron Desantis] to do it.

    I offer my sincere prayer for Mr. Desantis to better himself this year, for his children’s sake as well as all others. We need honest people who care about everyone else, not just themselves or the other “few”.

    Mayor Gillum, who has the necessary administrative skills and experience to manage Florida as our next Governor, stated the obvious:

    “We’ve got to make sure we stay focused on the issues that affect every day people,” Gillum said. “I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump. There’s enough of that going on.”

    “I’m going to try and stay high, try to talk about what the … future is for the state of Florida,” Gillum said. “I think that’s what people want. They’re just so sick of this divisive, derisive politics that’s come out of Washington, and has now infiltrated the politics of this state.”

    The vast majority of Florida voters also have their eye on the future, and “divisive, derisive politics” is not the path we intend to follow! We seek to unify people around issues and resolutions most agree upon . . . and there are many issues upon which most of us agree!

    One issue on the agenda of our state to resolves around legalizing cannabis in the State of Florida; providing the right of adults in Florida over the age of twenty-one to possess, use and grow cannabis, on private property, for medicinal or personal use within your own home or down the street at an adult neighbor’s home . . . cannabis will be legal!

    Both Bernie Sanders and Andrew Gillum seek to legalize cannabis on a statewide basis.

    Floridians For Freedom are calling upon all Florida voters to rally together in this election of 2018, then again in 2020, to put us on a course to better resolve the issues facing us today. We too, intend to avoid divisive divisions in order to better address the issue we are interested in being resolved, and that is legalizing cannabis and hemp plants for adult use.

    We urge all Florida voters to sign a petition called RIGHT OF ADULTS TO CANNABIS [Initiative Serial # 15-20] that provides the right of adults to possess, use and cultivate cannabis on private property, for medicinal purposes or personal use.

    Go to our website, FloridiansForFreedom.com to print one out, read and if you agree, to sign and mail in to us. If you really like it, make two more petition copies to give to other registered Florida voters, and ask them to do the same. We need one million signed copies by December 2019 in order to vote on whether we should legalize cannabis in Florida in the following state and national elections of 2020.

    We further urge voters to sign all legal cannabis petitions with which they agree, so that we can put this issue on the ballot for a vote in our 2020 election, bypassing our politicians so we can finally vote whether or not to legalize cannabis, and if so, which legal cannabis proposal do we wish to approve to become our state law. REGULATE FLORIDA is a second proposal, so Florida voters can choose which is the best. More proposals may be introduced in the near future. If you agree, please sign and send them in.

    By 2020, Floridians For Freedom, a volunteer non-partisan group of Florida citizens, intends to end the 80 year old federal government’s racist, greed based plot to secretly eliminate cannabis and hemp plants in 1937, by prohibiting “marijuana” [the racist term used to conceal it was medicinal cannabis as well as hemp plants being made illegal].

    Why was cannabis [“marijuana” made illegal???

    In the 1930’s, business partners Rockefeller and DuPont wanted to use petroleum oil for auto fuel and as the base material to manufacture plastics instead of using the fiber of earth friendly, non-polluting, biodegradable hemp crops for the same purpose. U.S. Secretary of Treasurer Andrew J. Mellon and newspaper mongol, Wm. Hearst, bought up huge tracts of virgin forests to cut down the trees use to produce paper pulp and construction lumber instead of hemp, first used humans began to write, has produced the best paper and can make usable construction materials as well, to replace using our dwindling forests. The new pharmaceutical companies wished to get rid of medicinal cannabis products, used for thousands of years, in order to sell their man-made drugs that have often been toxic and addictive to use.

    Here we are today, with the whole world awash in the pollution from petroleum oil and non-biodegradable plastics washing up on the shorelines, fumes in the air, degrading our soil and hundreds of thousands of people addicted to pharmaceutical opiates, dying from the “cures” some drugs promise, but do not deliver relief. It is time for positive change!

    Thank you, Andrew . . . can’t wait to cast my next vote for you, come November 6, 2018!

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